three hour performance on saturday...

thanks to the folks at VOLUME, i will be doing a 3 hour performance (the second longest performance i've ever done) for the "perform! now!" festival which runs in chinatown for the weekend. i'll be performing on saturday july 30 from 7-10pm in a gallery space at 933 Hill St., Los Angeles. because it will be mayhem all around and people coming in and out of the performance space, i'll probably try something different (especially since i usually perform for about 20-30 minutes), so don't fall over if you see me with a guitar and a distortion pedal. it will still be slow. it will still be improvised. it will still be melodic, and somewhat melancholy. but it might also be LOUD. fortunately the event is free...

some color suggestions...

color instructions from 1940's coloring pictures originally found inside boxes of shredded wheat cereal...

when sensibility had no crannies...

just as the impressionists of whom i consider myself a descendant, just as, more directly, DELACROIX of whom i consider myself a disciple, i stroll about and consider sympathetic states, a real or imaginary landscape, an object, a person, or quite simply a cloud of unknown sensibility through which by chance i suddenly traverse, an ambiance...

from the voiceless conversation that ensues between these state of things and myself, an impalpable affinity is born, "indefinable," as DELACROIX would say. it is this "indefinable," this inexpressible poetic moment, that i desire to fix on my canvas since my mode of being (notice i am not saying expression) is to make paintings. And so i paint the pictorial moment that is born of an illumination by impregnation in life itself.

"...to feel the soul without explanation, without vocabulary, and to represent that feeling... this is, i believe, foremost among the reasons that led me to the monochrome!"

for me the art of painting is to produce, to create freedom in the first material state.

the lines, bars of a psychological prison, as i see, it are certainly in ourselves and in nature, but they are our chains; they are the concretization of our mortal state, our sentimentality, our intellect, limiting our spiritual realm. they are our heredity, our education, our vices, our aspirations, our qualities, our gimmicks... in short, they are our psychological world in its entirety, down to its most subtle crannies.

color, on the contrary, on a human and natural scale, is that which is most immersed in cosmic sensibility. sensibility has no crannies; it is like humidity in the air. color, for me, is the "materialization" of sensibility.

color permeates everything just as indefinable sensibility permeates without form and without limit. it is spacial matter that is at once abstract and real.

the line may be infinite, just as the spiritual is, but the line does not have the capacity to fill the all-encompassing immeasurability; it does not posses the capacity of color to impregnate everything.

from "the monochrome adventure" in overcoming the problematics of art, the writings of yves klein

everywhere...

"everywhere there was the same white play of reflections from the empty plain, a feverish flicker sliding through this little town that was cut off from all reality. before the houses there lay high banks of snow. the air was clear and dry. it was still snowing a little, but the flakes were falling thinly - flat, almost shriveled, glittering little scales - as it it might stop soon. here and there, from above the shut doors of the houses, windows looked down into the street with a bright blue glassy gaze, and the ground underfoot rang like glass too. sometimes a piece of hard, frozen snow crashed down through a gully, tearing a jagged hole in the stillness. and suddenly the wall of a house would glow in rosy light, or in delicate canary-yellow...

then all claudine did seemed oddly heightened, more intensely alive: and in the hushed silence of all things visible seemed to light one another up, as it were echoing one another in a larger visibility. and then it would all withdraw into itself again and in meaningless streets the houses were like little groups of mushrooms in the woods, or like a thicket of wind-bent shrubs on a wide plane, while she still felt a dizziness and an immensity beyond. there was in her some kind of fire, some burning, bitter fluid, and while she walked and mused, she seemed to herself a huge, mysterious vessel that was being carried through the streets - a thin-walled flaming vessel".

robert musil, the perfecting of a love - from selected writings

which is itself angles in space...

i recently discovered the work of charles ginnever while looking through the reviews section of a 1973 issue of artforum, which contained a smallish image of a sculpture, untitled from 1972. in the photograph, the angles made of wood, appear as a relatively simple pair of objects, yet the relationship of the lines, planes, angles, and material presence suggests a slow down, a feeling as if the piece was wrought from a series of complex decisions and calculations. i didn't know anything about ginnever before discovering this image, but he has a great website, and fortunately for us untitled is a middle period piece of work, and he has continued to explore similar territory towards some beautiful structures that mine systems, permutations, and the language of minimalist form.

during the 70's, artforum's exhibition reviews tended to be a few short columns written by one writer reflecting upon 3 or four shows that he or she somehow felt were connected. ginnever's work is reviewed here with a show of helen frankenthaller's sculpture and work by another artist i'd never heard of, boris lover-lorski. the reviews were written by joseph masheck, who connects the exhibitions through their medium... sculpture. while he takes both frankenthaller and lover-lorski to task - although not for the same reasons - his description of ginnever's untitled work expands upon what one can see in the small black and white reproduction.

he begins by telling the reader that "untitled" was shown along with 2 other works of ginnever's and all 3 were displayed on hammarskjold plaza - a public space in ny, which meshack importantly points out had been used for demonstrations. he goes on to describe the work's formal qualities in depth:

"a large construction consisting of two visually simple but geometrically complex angles - their legs meet at a corner angle which is itself angles in space - resting on their legs. this pair of angles is put together with massive, unfinished lumber, to which has been applied a cheerful, workmanly care that is noticeable in the crude yet serviceable joints and the practical yet honest patches fixing flaws in the timber. whether by design or by adjustment to the site, where the legs of the angles are chamfered to rest flat on the ground, they also fit exactly into the corners of the square parapet on which the piece is set, claiming the space as well as enhancing it. i like the feeling that the work is built to spec."

many things excite me about the image and masheck's description of it (especially the use of the word "chamfered"), because the image along with masheck's words, suggest ginnever's work is not exactly what it seems to be, and that it is wholly his own. but perhaps i should mention some of my own first impressions based on the image - before i had read meshack's review...

first off i imagined the scale as being somewhat smaller than "a large construction" thinking the ramps might be scaled to skateboard ramps and/or a small tent-like bus stop shelter. i saw them as architectural experiments (which formally of course they are), but more so towards people occupying their inside spaces, particularly in rain or snow. the wood stood out a great deal, as without any knowledge of the meticulous approach to angles and site, the materials felt wonky and temporary. the visibility of knotted wood suggested something other than the crisp minimalism of the time, and perhaps more human than machined. the angles of the wood edges that meet the ground suggests that the two objects are potentially two smaller revealed areas of a single larger work, connected physically beneath the ground as if forming the shape of an "M".

looking at the image, i kept thinking about a person on a bike or a skateboard moving in and out of both spaces in figure 8's. the odd ramp-like forms somehow suggested entrances and exits of corb's art building at harvard... and for some reason as much as corb is a stretch i can't stop thinking about kaprow, which seemed even more of a stretch - yet ginnever's wooden structure evokes for me some strange connection to kaprow's set for 18 happenings in 6 parts, which was also wrought from cheap wood; and like ginnever's sculpture, kaprow's set was all about the potential of how humans might move through it. for some reason every time i see this image i think of kaprow.

after i read meshack's review, i was interested in the fact that "untitled" was presented in a public space - and a space that had been used for demonstrations. of course, even from the photograph i figured "untitled" was purposely sited (or site specific), but now i see this is not only because of its form (which of course does confront the site with intentionality), but because of its potential "use" by humans - which brings the work's intentions closer to someone like serra (with tiled arc, twain, etc.)

taking my own impressions, along with meshack's writing, as well as what i was able to glean from ginnever's website, it makes sense that his public work could appear to be a stage or a set for activity, as ginnever's performance works of the 60's also fell under the rubric of "happenings", giving my kaprow association to "untitled" a little more intuited weight than a random perception.

on his website, you can see that ginnever's work from the mid-1980's forward combines conceptual sculpture (what i would call something that comes from ideas as opposed to formal concerns) and formal sculpture (obviously concerned mainly with form) into a space of pure perception (where seeing literally changes one's thinking, expanding one's mind simply through the experience of looking). these ideas would not be out of place in discussing an artist like turrell, but ginnever does these things through the careful manipulation of form, with repetition and permutations, and nothing else. his works are static in terms of actual motion, but long before the internet hijacked the word, ginnever's sculpture was filled with "virtual" motion. i am also interested in how his relationship to minimalism seems a conversation rather than a conversion, and more than anything his work continues to feel experimental.

in looking at the evolution of ginnever's work, i realized that while judd shed his early colored idiosyncratic forms in all their awkward unresolved beauty, ginnever still carries something of his earliest work with him. his recent large scale works are generally steel and generally "slick" but they still have a beautifully unresolved quality to their "design", and the work has continued to evolve - less with signature tropes, than continuing to expand the view.

when houses hang from helicopters...

black and white images from a very short article from 1973 found sunday at the flea, and a small color promotional postcard (which may or may not have already appeared on airforms), all related to the the futuro - "a finnish designed fiber-glass mobile pad that looks more like a spaceship than a weekend pied-a-terre". the "bungalow" was 26 feet in diamter, and could be purchased furnished. according to the article the fiber-glass structure was nearly maintenance free, and its "sealed-up saucer shape and unique ventilation system all but eliminate dust and humidity." plus it seems that transport could be done via helicopter.

in the early 1970's the finnish pod was shown in the usa at state fairs, and the company also had offices in illinois and philadelphia. no idea if any of the ones built or shown here are still around.

when horns sound like stars burst...

three images of bugles from a fantastic martin ramirez exhibition seen at the renia sofia museum in madrid a few months ago. one of the best things about the sofia as opposed to the prado is that you are allowed to take pictures, thus one can creep along knowing there is the potential towards phone camera notation of wall labels and artworks. of course, it is generally nice to struggle with notations using a pen in a notebook, which travel with me everywhere; but sometimes it is nice to be able to have a replica on hand a couple of days later when the mind pictures and hieroglyphics in the notebook don't cut it. two years ago i saw a similar show of ramirez's work at the craft folk art museum in ny where no pictures were allowed. i have a few notes in my notebook from that time with cryptic notations about how ramirez seemed to be picturing sound in his starburst forms on the inside of bugles, but i wasn't able to capture with my own hands, the feeling i wanted to take from his. it wasn't until i saw the images flattened onto the screen of my phone, and then computer, that ramirez's sound projecting outward reminded me of the graphic psychedelic sunlight emanating from a tadanori yokoo or stanley mouse poster...

p.s. for anyone that has mucho money to burn, the incredible stanley mouse bo diddley poster pictured above is available here

when 2 of my favorite recent finds suggest joseph cornell

banjo player: cdv circa 1880; piano player: rppc circa 1900... if you click on the piano player you can see her larger...

can a super famous writer still be underrated?

this short paragraph from the beginning of melville's benito cereno completely kills me:

the morning was one peculiar to that coast. everything was mute and calm; everything gray. the sea, though undulated into long roods of swells, seemed fixed, and was sleeked at the surface like waved lead that has cooled and set in the smelter's mold. the sky seemed a gray surtout. flights of troubled gray fowl, kith and kin with flights of troubled gray vapors among which they were mixed, skimmed low and fitfully over the waters, as swallows over meadows before storms. shadows present, foreshadowing deeper shadows to come.

i think if greatness, like men, lead by example, this here little fragment professes at least a whiff of melville's greatness; but i had no intention to post some well thought out argument towards a deeper appreciation, just a slight drawing of attention to a gem.

in truth, i have not read a more beautiful little paragraph in a long time, and as much as my intention was to simply post it and leave it at that, i've been sick in bed all day and me and my cold medicine have decided together that i should bend my mind a little more... so i hope that based on the above, you will agree that melville is underrated, and also that in view of what lies below, you will indulge me in a bit of rambling...

a short list of words and a phrase that melville uses in the paragraph that i've never seen nor heard:

roods, sleeked, "waved lead", and surtout .

(in terms of surtout apparently blogger has never seen the word either as it comes up as being misspelled). sleeked and "waved lead" i can picture towards meanings in my mind's eye, but roods and surtout i do not have any meaningful grasp of (yes, i know i can look them up if i do so desire, but i'd rather let them settle within me before such uncoverings).

here are some words that appear in sequential order in the same sentences and sound fantastic together, almost like poems:

the
sea, though
roods of swells, seemed
and
sleeked
the surface
waved
lead
cooled and set
the smelt-
er's mold.


flights
of troubled
gray fowl,
kith and kin
flights
of troubled
gray va-
pors
among which
they were
mixed,
skimmed
low and fit-
fully over
the waters,
as swallows
over meadows
before storms.

shadows
foreshadowing
shadows
to come.

here are some words within sentences that seem to speak to sentences before and after them:

peculiar.
mute.

every-thing gray.
the sea, though.

roods / swells, seemed / sleeked / surface / set /smelter's mold.
sky seemed / surtout.

surtout.
troubled.

gray.
gray / gray.

vapors / skimmed / swallows.
shadows / foreshadow-ing/shadows.

among.
come.

here are words from various sentences that seem to be speaking to each other (and are best read aloud):

morning coast troubled
swells lead set smelter's before
everything everything mixed skimmed which fitfully
gray undulated waved gray gray vapors among gray they
peculiar surface undulated present
though undulated mute roods cooled
long calm mold troubled
sleeked seemed lead see lead seemed deeper were deeper
sky flights kith kin fixed flights
low over over meadows shadows foreshadowing shadows waters swallows storms come
surtout fowl

here are fragments of melville's entire paragraph written from end to beginning, with some words taken out:

come to shadows deeper
foreshadowing, present shadows.

storms before meadows over swallows
as, waters
fitfully and low skimmed,
mixed were they which
among vapors gray

the in set and cooled
that lead
waved like surface
fixed
seemed, swells
of roods long into undulated

sea the. gray everything;
calm and mute was everything.

peculiar one was the morning.
___

one more reason i love sol lewitt...

from a letter printed in a 1973 artforum magazine...

sirs:

since 1967 i have been doing folded paper drawings and torn paper drawings. i wanted them to be relatively inexpensive so that they would available to many people. the price was $100 each. some dealers, however, have sold them for more. if anyone has paid more than $100 for one of these drawings, please go back to the dealer from whom it was bought and get a refund for the difference.

-sol lewitt
new york city

when paintings are like frosting...

i've been spending a bit of time with a 1969 exhibition catalog of paintings by bram bogart. i can't really speak as to why i keep going back to these images and thumbing through them. part of it is the catalog itself - with its screen printed deco font over acetate cover and yellow spiral binding, not to mention a very strange printing process and some of the paintings pictured outside in garden - but bogart's paintings also seem ripe for the moment. while they wear some of their late 60's pop aesthetic on their sleeves, the paintings would also be right at home in any number of hipster galleries in culver city or chinatown, seeming much more connected to los angeles painting than ny (at least in terms of recent history).

i didn't know bogart's work before i found the catalog, but it seems he's still painting, still painting thickly, and still following his own path. it's always kind of befuddling to discover someone who has been working for so long, showing for so long in well known galleries, and somehow escaping a presence in and amongst the mainstream artworld discourse. while many young artists probably have as little knowledge of bogart's work as i do, these paintings could, and perhaps should, be seen as some sort of precedence.

thumbing through old art magazines, there are always interesting works by artists who had their 15 seconds and disappeared; but there are also artists like bogart who have continued to follow a path over time, that for one reason or another are rarely discussed.

bogart's work from the late 60's reminds me a bit of judd's early paintings, in terms of a rich yet minimal palette, awkward clunky presence, and a hybrid of pop and minimal sensibility. bogart's paintings are less "odd" than judd's, feeling more comfortable than conflicted, and they have much more of a punch-y presence than judd's earliest works, which seem more inclined towards contemplation. the object-ness and surface qualities of bogart's paintings also suggests a bit of early ryman (who i would think would most likely cringe at such a comparison), but the physical landscape of both artist's works are what drives their power. of course, bogart's work seems to reek of a hurried troweled rough-edged skronky process, while ryman's whispers meditation and rigor... but both made (and still make) objects that converse with the possibilities of painting - and both accept and deny certain painting specifics.

bogart's work also has a bit of a cartoon-ish feel; but his formulaic process keeps them from being as experimental as someone like al taylor, and their static qualities keep them from being as animated (and erotic) as someone like john altoon... but there is a tension between pop's immediate slap in the face and the soft lathery surfaces that want to be touched.

THIS SUNDAY... sound in architecture...

on sunday june 20th, i will be participating in 12X12 at country club projects at the buck house - designed by r.m. schindler in 1934. the event runs from 10 am - 10 pm, and will be made up of one hour sets of music by a number of visual artists. rather than performing and/or dj'ing, we were invited to play an hour of music related to what inspires each of us in our studios. i'll be spinning records at 8PM

to be honest i don't listen to music in the studio while i'm painting or drawing (unless working on something like this), but i do listen to music when i'm building...

rather than prepare an hour's music in itunes or on disc, i will be bringing a nice group of 7" records, pulling from a wide variety of music. while i am still gathering "the stack" so far it runs the gamut from italian field recordings of itinerant singers, david jay of bauhaus with surrealist poet rene halkett, loren chasse's project ov, indian film music, sounds of insects, chanting from nepal, some 70s r&b, french singer giles marchal, moondog, and much more... should be a good time.

here's the schedule of artists:
10:00 AM – Steven Bankhead
11:00 AM – Tony MacKenzie
12:00 PM – Hannah Greely & Elana Scherr
1:00 PM – Chris Wilder
2:00 PM – Alex Becerra
3:00 PM – Jason Yates
4:00 PM – Jan Tumlir
5:00 PM – Jonah Freeman & Justin Lowe
6:00 PM – Tom Norris
7:00 PM – T. Kelly Mason
8:00 PM – Steve Roden
9:00 PM – Thaddeus Strode
and i believe on top of great music and beautiful architecture there will be snacks as well...

when a filmmaker's dreams are like poems...

"i am running down a street.

i am wearing a silvered business suit.

it is not i.

the figure is stopped mid-stride, one arm flung out.

the street vanishes.

-----

the word 'title' is flung at me off five white gloved fingers backed by a vague clown face.

-----

something of dead leaves... a rustling.

-----

a waiting - expectancy.
a sea-scape.
large people with smashed faces bending over.

-----

a paw print - one toe bent in cashew curl... so that it reminds me of a flower petal.

-----

a quarter-turn clockwise of multicolored basket shapes merry-go-rounding - reds, blues, yellows, and more distant blurs of other shades. dusty-yellowed browns for ground, and a pale blue clouded sky. a very few still silhouettes of people shape."

-----

some of stan brakhages 1975 dreams as remembered upon waking, from "i....sleeping (being a dream journal and parenthetical explication)", published 1988 by island cinema resources. image: brakhage's anticipation of the night, 1958.

before air shows and sky writing...

"we futurist aviators will give day - and night-time aerial theatre performances... during the day, above an immeasurable expanse of spectators, painted aeroplanes will dance in a colored aerial environment formed by the smoke they diffuse, and at night they will compose mobile constellations and fantastic dances, invested with light projections"
fedele azare, probably 1910

with deer-shy sensitivity...

"our encounter with nature is an encounter with life, with what is. if anyone knew what art was, it would be intolerable, as if we knew what nature was, that might just be as intolerable. what we meet in nature is its mystery, and in approaching it, a measure of what might be called "shyness" is required... one who depicts nature should advance towards what he wishes to describe with deer-shy sensitivity. it won't do to lock the description into heavy, cumbersome facts."

late-born swarms of flying beings
make their way under leafless trees.
they stop suddenly at places in the lee of the wind
and are seen dancing up and down
where the autumn sun can still warm them.
no one can utter their names or their species
before the fall wind thrusts them out of the year
towards homeless seas of air.

if each one could be called a word,
then a life-language blows away there on the wind.
life and death, the two great squanderers,
play a bold game at night.
uncounted, countless, most of what we see whirls
forever away, permanently dispersed.

(a drawing, quote, and poem by harry martinson - the quote and poem from "wild bouquet: nature poems by harry martinson", the drawing is undated and scrawled with an inscription on the endpaper of my copy of utsikt fran en grastuva)

if all rings were grooves...

yesterday i was able to visit my favorite japanese temple/garden - commonly known as ginkakuji temple, and even though i have been there many times over the last 15 years or so, i always manage to see things i'd not noticed before, or even more interestingly, seeing things i had seen before but in a new light.

one such moment occurred near the entrance, where there is a small shrine at the top of a few steps on a very small path of rocks. i'd seen it from the ground, but never knew one could walk up to the shrine itself. the shrine is small and not such a big deal, but turning around to walk back down the few steps, i realized i could see my favorite part of the landscape (a mound of sand known as "kogetsudai" which is evocative of mount fuji) from an entirely different angle and height.

seeing the large sand mound from above, i noticed the gravel around it had been "combed" in concentric circles by some sort of rake, and i began to notice, of course, the resemblance between the circular rakings around the larger mound, and the circular grooves found on the surface of a record.

normally, this kind of visual one to one relationship is where such a thought would end, but in light of the recent advances of technology in relation to "reading" grooves, i began to wonder about it more. it got me thinking about edouard-léon scott de martinville's phonoautograph machine, which made drawings from voices with soot and a stylus; and how a few years ago some scientists were able to "read" the stylus drawings and translate them back into sound.

obviously a path of raked stones would not contain soundwaves or information connected to the vibration of a stylus, nonetheless i wonder what might the sound be like if someone were able to "play" these circular sand lines. in all likelihood, it would sound like a wall of noise in all its splendor; yet i can't help but wonder, if within such a thing, there might be a bit of the essence of the landscape or some audible residue of all that has sounded upon this site...

a tuning fork in an ambrotype...

and there he sits

amidst

the chemical reactions to the glass, as if

the sound from his tuning fork - so still

and present upon his thigh -

is visible.

his hand perhaps

resting upon some scientific equation,

or the words towards some

alchemical spell,

his index finger touching a first word of acoustic revelation

or the last word in a sequence

revealing a magic.

his notes rest upon a book closed,

while an acidic chemical rainbow

hovers just above his head - and ears -

like a sheet lost to the wind.

two black scars like snakes fallen from trees,

parenthesis or cupped hands

as he becomes a voice.

his chest glows, his whole body

is listening...

(a rare ambrotype featuring a man holding a tuning fork, circa 1870, one of my favorite recent acquisitions).

when the russian avant garde suggests captain america and guru dutt...

while going through a couple of boxes in my storage space i found a magazine i bought in the late 1980's called the journal of decorative and propaganda arts. this 1987 summer issue had a special "russian/soviet" theme, and i'm guessing i originally bought it for the articles on the ballets russes ( around that time i was pretty obsessed with cocteau, satie, and nijinsky), and early russian avant garde book design.

the strange thing about looking at something i last looked at 23 years ago - during a kind of nether-moment between undergrad and grad school - is seeing what might have inspired me then, and what inspires me now. certain things, such as lev bakst's beautiful costume drawings, seemed very important to me 23 years ago, but i can't for the life of me now figure out how they might have impacted my work and thinking then. looking through the magazine now, there are also things that i don't remember ever seeing, which means i felt they were irrelevant towards my interests then, but which now feel much more relevant to my work and interests, but were simply outside of the scope of my own vision then.

there is one work in the magazine that i remember killed me then, and still kills me now. this is the 1913 watercolor by mikhail larionov pictured above, which was created as a cover design for alexei kruchenykh's book of poems called pomade. in 1987 i was just entering a stage painting that looked like "pure abstraction" on the outside, but was really constructed of images and symbols much more reflective of narrative on the inside. thus at the time, the visual language of the russian avant garde provided a lot of inspiration for me, particularly the pre-constructivist works.

this watercolor by larionov, still feels somehow as if it is straddling the space between abstraction and image, even though the piece is clearly an image. at a time when i was moving away from the aggressive and violent imagery of a former punk rocker heavily influenced by the language of german expressionism, i was finding my way towards quieter and more introspective explorations, fueled by the discovery of rilke, and arthur dove. larionov's picture seemed to signify, for me, this shift. the way he deals with image seems to riff away from blue rider and german expressionist tendencies, towards more visual freedom, softness and a bit closer (although tentative) towards abstraction.

seeing larionov's image now, it feels even more powerful. as a maker, i realize that the simplicity is completely deceptive, and on top of everything that i have learned about history over the last 20 years or so, the image still has the ability to bring more conversation to the table, such as how much it suddenly seems related to early modernist japanese painting. but none of these connections are what set me to wanting to write about larionov's piece. i wanted to write about it because it suggested something to me that has nothing to do with art history, something outside of larionov's own intentions, and yet the minute my eyes fell upon that image, my mind flew towards a 1957 film still, which of course, seemed totally unrelated.

larionov's watercolor, was originally made for a book titled "pomade", and the image seems to be of an angel (or a four armed man) rubbing/massaging another person's head, and it left me thinking of a scene from one of my favorite films of all time, guru dutt's 1957 masterpiece pyaasa. one of the classic scenes in the film consists of johnny walker standing in a park, massaging a gentleman's head with oil, while singing a song. the scene is somewhat hilarious as walker not only massages the man's scalp, but includes some bongo type "drumming" upon his head in sync with the music and walker's song.

i know it would be a ridiculously unrealistic leap of faith to think that dutt might've been inspired to write the scene after seeing larinov's cover piece for pomade, but dutt was certainly schooled in art history, and he did "borrow" ideas from other things. one of the main plot devices in pyaasa was stolen from the hollywood film sullivan's travels. in both films the main character loses his coat to a bum,who then gets hit by a train and dies; which leads everyone to think that the main character has died. dutt loved hollywood films, and was clear and "transparent" in his use of preston sturges' earlier plot device; but of course, i have never read anything by him that mentions larionov's drawing as an influence on the johnny walker pomade scene.

the magazine also contains a photograph of a "sports costume" designed by varvara stepanova from the early 1920's. i don't remember this image from my first encounter with the magazine, but does seem strange for a russian design to resemble an american flag, and even more so to resemble some of the patriotic clothing rural americans wore in homespun fourth of july parades and festivals in the late 1800's. the dress, as you can see above, is red, white, and blue, and contains a star in the center and a number of stripes. like larionov's pomade drawing, what surprised me wasn't so much the reference to the american flag, but again to something seemingly unrelated, the superhero outfit of captain america.

as with larionov's image, i have no idea where, when, or if images of this dress ever traveled, but i can't help but wonder if jack kirby and joe simon , who created captian america in 194o to combat the rising tide of hitler and nazi-ism, ever saw stepanova's design. russian avant garde designs and artworks were certainly known in the usa by the 1940's, but how much of it was exhibited in museums or published in magazines i have no idea. of course, all of these thoughts are quite a stretch, and my thoughts are simply founded upon intuitive connections as opposed to academic or scholarly research, but perhaps it is simply setting the table for more connections between seemingly disconnected things, or at least suggesting some amount of the potential viability of following one's own path through things...

a case for patience...

"a half-starved fox, who saw in the hollow of an oak tree some bread and meat left there by shepherds, crept in and ate it. with his stomach distended he could not get out again. another fox, passing by and hearing his cries and lamentations, came up and asked what was the matter. on being told, he said: 'well, stay in there till you are thin as you were when you went in; then you'll get out quite easily.'
this tale shows us how time solves difficult problems."

from: fables of aesop,
translated by s.a. handford,
illustrations by brian robb,
penguin classics, 1954

when the moon was an ear (3 poems by vicente huidobro)

New Song:

Inside the Horizon
SOMEONE WAS SINGING

The voice
is not known
WHERE DOES IT COME FROM

Among the branches
No one is to be seen

The moon itself was an ear

And one hears
no sound

However
a star unnailed
Has fallen into the pond

THE HORIZON
HAS CLOSED UP
And there is no exit
-----

Blind:

Beyond the last window
the bells of the Sacre'-Coer
Make the leaves fall

ON THE SUMMIT
A BLIND MAN

Eyelids full of muscic
Raises his hands
in the midst of the void

She who comes from afar
Has not given him her arm

He is all alone
And with broken voice

He sings a melody
that no one
has understood
-----

Midnight:

The hours glide
Like drops of water on a window pane

Midnight silence

Fear unrolls in the air
And the wind
hides at the bottom of the well

OH

It's a leaf
We think the world is going to end
Time

stirs in the shadow

Everyone is asleep
A SIGH
Inside the house someone has died
-----
from the cubist poets in paris, an anthology, huidobro's poems here are most likely from the 1920's but the book only cites the originals used for the translations, not the original dates of the poems (which is very annoying...). i would also check out huidobro's manifestos, published several years ago by green integer.